William Friedkin

“I’ve revisited The Exorcist over the years and found it effective every time. Because it’s founded on characters, details and a realistic milieu, the shocks don’t date; they still seem to grow from the material… The movie is more horrifying because it does not seem to want to be. The horror creeps into the lives of characters preoccupied with their lives: Father Karras (Miller) with his mother and his faith, Father Merrin (von Sydow) with his work and health, Chris MacNeil (Burstyn) with her career and marriage. The movie also gains power because it takes its theology seriously–for a movie, anyway.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

2. (0) The Shining

Stanley Kubrick

“The Shining, Stanley Kubrick’s indelible take on both the horror genre and the popular fiction of Stephen King, is both a radical distillation of its source novel’s densely stuffed ghosts-and-gore imagery as well as a conflation of its hidden central theme of the true-life horrors of domestic abuse. The result is a film that, though it ignores almost every major spook-show episode in the novel (nope, no teeming wasp’s nest here), enhances everything that’s legitimately unnerving about King’s book… Kubrick’s The Shining dwells at the outer limits of what can be thought of as a genre film, stretching the definition, filling it out, leaving it richer in its wake.” – Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine

3. (0) Psycho

Alfred Hitchcock

“Where would we be without Psycho? Fifty years on and Hitch’s delicious cod-Freudian nightmare about a platinum-blonde embezzler (Leigh) who neglected to consult a guide before selecting her motel still has much to answer for. It blazed a bloody trail for the much-loved slasher cycle, but it also assured us that a B-movie could be A-grade in quality and innovation. It dared to suggest that your star didn’t need to surface from an ordeal smelling of roses (or, indeed, at all). It combined a knife, a scream, a melon, some chocolate sauce, Bernard Herrmann’s greatest score and more than 70 edits to push the envelope of screen violence.” – David Jenkins, Time Out

4. (0) Alien

Ridley Scott

“One of the great strengths of ‘Alien’ is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew’s discovery by building up to it with small steps: The interception of a signal (is it a warning or an SOS?). The descent to the extraterrestrial surface. The bitching by Brett and Parker, who are concerned only about collecting their shares. The masterstroke of the surface murk through which the crew members move, their helmet lights hardly penetrating the soup. The shadowy outline of the alien ship. The sight of the alien pilot, frozen in his command chair.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

5. (0) Halloween

John Carpenter

“It’s more clear than ever that John Carpenter’s Halloween is a remarkable film that towers over the endless clones that followed it. In fact—and this doesn’t really detract from Scream’s cleverness—watching Halloween again makes it apparent just how saddled with poor self-parody so many of its slasher follow-ups were… Carpenter’s story of childhood killer Michael Myers’ return to the town in which he has become a symbol of all that is dark relies more on suspense and suggestion than cheap shocks and gore, which in itself makes it a better film than its successors… Ignore the Prom Nights and the Friday The Thirteenths; Halloween cuts deepest.” – Keith Phipps, A.V. Club

6. (0) The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Tobe Hooper

“If you haven’t seen it in a while, here’s a reminder: It’s really fucking scary. Horror movies long ago had the horror taken out of them, but the gritty physicality of Texas Chainsaw is all too terrifyingly real. Shot through with Watergate-era malaise, it’s a chilling portrait of a nation with nowhere to hide, where selfish hippies are preyed upon by maniac rednecks in a world devoid of order. Hysterical, excessive and, oh yes, a masterpiece.” – Sam Adams, Philadelphia City Paper

7. (0) The Thing

John Carpenter

“A flop upon its release (by Universal, two weeks after Spielberg’s E.T.), this spatial masterpiece of desolate Arctic vistas at odds with close-quarters claustrophobia has since been hailed as a high totem of modern horror-making. There remains something deeply unnerving about Carpenter’s ambiguity as to whether the movie’s shape-shifting alien is distorting its hosts’ personalities or merely revealing something of their primal selves.” – Scott Foundas, The Village Voice

8. (0) Night of the Living Dead

George A. Romero

“Night of the Living Dead came out of nowhere, or to be more precise, Pittsburgh, and turned into the most influential horror film since Psycho. George Romero’s remarkably assured debut, made on a shoestring, about a group of people barricaded inside a farmhouse while an army of flesh-eating zombies roams the countryside, deflates all genre clichés. It traded the expressionistic sets of the traditional fright flick for a neorealistic style—Romero’s use of natural locations and grainy black and white gave his gorefest the look and feel of a doc… This was Middle America at war, and the zombie carnage seemed a grotesque echo of the conflict then raging in Vietnam.” – Elliott Stein, The Village Voice

9. (0) Jaws

Steven Spielberg

“Jaws is a lively, chaotic swirl of contradictions, prodigious talent, and formal mastery. It’s a thriller that played a role in the entire restructuring of Hollywood’s methods of selling its films to the public. Jaws was the sure-to-be calamity that became one of the most beloved and quoted films of all time… The surprise is how good it was and still is. The film is a strange mixture of the über-controlled and the wild and wooly. Imagine if portions of Psycho were spliced into one of Hal Ashby’s early films and you’d be closer to the film’s tone than you might think.” – Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine

10. (0) Rosemary’s Baby

Roman Polanski

“Horrifying and darkly comic, Rosemary’s Baby was Roman Polanski’s Hollywood debut. This wildly entertaining nightmare, faithfully adapted from Ira Levin’s best seller, stars a revelatory Mia Farrow as a young mother-to-be who grows increasingly suspicious that her overfriendly elderly neighbors (played by Sidney Blackmer and an Oscar-winning Ruth Gordon) and self-involved husband (John Cassavetes) are hatching a satanic plot against her and her baby. In the decades of occult cinema that Polanski’s ungodly masterpiece has spawned, it has never been outdone for sheer psychological terror.” – The Criterion Collection

11. (0) Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens

F.W. Murnau

“A masterpiece of the German silent cinema and easily the most effective version of Dracula on record. F.W. Murnau’s 1922 film follows the Bram Stoker novel fairly closely, although he neglected to purchase the screen rights—hence, the title change. But the key elements are all Murnau’s own: the eerie intrusions of expressionist style on natural settings, the strong sexual subtext, and the daring use of fast-motion and negative photography.” – Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

12. (+2) A Nightmare on Elm Street

Wes Craven

“As often occurs in low-budget features, some of the acting around the fringes is slightly amateurish, and the ending suggests post-production tinkering, but “A Nightmare on Elm Street” works gangbusters in all the ways it really counts. Terrifically spooky and original—at the point in which the movie was made, there had never been anything like it—the film continues to feel completely modern despite being almost a quarter-century old” – Dustin Putman, The Movie Boy

13. (-1) Dawn of the Dead

George A. Romero

“Dawn of the Dead is one of the best horror films ever made — and, as an inescapable result, one of the most horrifying. It is gruesome, sickening, disgusting, violent, brutal and appalling. It is also (excuse me for a second while I find my other list) brilliantly crafted, funny, droll, and savagely merciless in its satiric view of the American consumer society. Nobody ever said art had to be in good taste.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“Twenty years after its original theatrical release, Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead still feels like the punchiest horror flick this side of a Dario Argento gialli. Made on a shoe-string budget, The Evil Dead is difficult to assess for what initially seems like nothing more than B-movie schlock. Ash (Bruce Campbell) and his friends take a weekend trip to the woods only to stumble across the mysterious Book of the Dead. Spells are unleashed, friends go zombie and Ash is forced to test the limits of his squeamishness. Raimi’s script is riotously deadpan, his compositions undeniably breathtaking and inventive. The director relentlessly fashions the film’s first half as a creepy-crawly sweat chamber with evil seemingly taking the form of an omniscient, roaming camera.” – Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine

15. (-2) Bride of Frankenstein

James Whale

“The best of the Frankenstein movies–a sly, subversive work that smuggled shocking material past the censors by disguising it in the trappings of horror. Some movies age; others ripen. Seen today, Whale’s masterpiece is more surprising than when it was made because today’s audiences are more alert to its buried hints of homosexuality, necrophilia and sacrilege. But you don’t have to deconstruct it to enjoy it; it’s satirical, exciting, funny, and an influential masterpiece of art direction.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

16. (-1) Suspiria

Dario Argento

“As distinctive in its painterly colors as Val Lewton’s horror films were in their expressive swaths of black and white, Suspiria serves up a gorehound’s feast of explicit mayhem. But never has gratuitous bloodletting seemed so ornately beautiful… Argento’s vibrant color scheme leaps off the screen like a ’50s Technicolor musical, with sets and lighting design that fill the Cinemascope frame with bold reds, greens, yellows, and blues… Long admired in cult circles, Suspiria stands as one of the most visually striking horror films ever made, and the high watermark of a first-rate splatter stylist.” – Scott Tobias, A.V. Club

17. (+1) The Silence of the Lambs

Jonathan Demme

“Although Demme does reveal the results of the killer’s violence, he for the most part refrains from showing the acts themselves; the film could never be accused of pandering to voyeuristic impulses. Under-standably, much has been made of Hopkins’ hypnotic Lecter, but the laurels must go to Levine’s killer, admirably devoid of camp overstatement, and to Foster, who evokes a vulnerable but pragmatic intelligence bent on achieving independence through sheer strength of will.” – Time Out

18. (-2) Frankenstein

James Whale

“A stark, solid, impressively stylish film, overshadowed (a little unfairly) by the later explosion of Whale’s wit in the delirious Bride of Frankenstein. Karloff gives one of the great performances of all time as the monster whose mutation from candour to chill savagery is mirrored only through his limpid eyes. The film’s great imaginative coup is to show the monster ‘growing up’ in all too human terms… The film is unique in Whale’s work in that the horror is played absolutely straight, and it has a weird fairytale beauty not matched until Cocteau made La Belle et la Bête.” – Tom Milne, Time Out

19. (+1) Evil Dead II

Sam Raimi

“Sam Raimi’s eye-popping sequel to the cult classic original deftly treads the line between frightfest and horror satire. Starring Bruce Campbell, Raimi’s favorite non-actor — or, as Raimi calls him, “the king of acting in reverse” — the film either follows nonsensically on the heels of the first or completely replaces it; it takes place in the same cabin with the same Book of the Dead, as if Ash would simply head on back to try his luck a second time. (He is just about that dim.) Deploying the full range of low-budget effects, Evil Dead II still looks junky, but Raimi’s goofball sense of humor makes the film’s very tawdriness appealing.” – Sam Adams, Philadelphia City Paper

20. (+1) Carrie

Brian De Palma

“Wickedly reckless and deliriously tasteless, Carrie is about the creation of a sorceress, a geek-girl fantasy—what nerdy high-school chick hasn’t longed to zap the popular bitches?—rife with hilarious sexual symbolism (my personal favorite is Carrie’s control of a wildly leaping fire hose). No movie ever needed to end with an orgasm as much as this one, and De Palma rises to the occasion with a scene many have imitated but none have duplicated. Even when his heroine is postmortem, it seems De Palma can’t stop watching.” – Jeannette Catsoulis, Reverse Shot

21. (+7) The Blair Witch Project

Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sánchez

“Shot with handheld cameras, Blair Witch has the look of a student film and its accompanying outtakes, but more importantly, it feels real. Its three principals (Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard) all give fine performances, creating fully realized characters from apparently candid moments in the film’s first half and doing a thoroughly convincing job of appearing scared witless in its second. And scary it is, but in a way not seen too often before. Blair Witch’s novel approach relies almost entirely on suggestion and implication, tapping into the same feelings conjured by a mysterious creak in an empty house.” – Keith Phipps, A.V. Club

22. (0) The Birds

Alfred Hitchcock

“With death dropping blandly out of a clear sky – its menace magnified into apocalypse from the crop-dusting scene in North by Northwest – this is Hitchcock at his best. Full of subterranean hints as to the ways in which people cage each other, it’s fierce and Freudian as well as great cinematic fun, with ample fodder for the amateur psychologist following up on Hitch’s tortuous involvement with his leading ladies.” – Tom Milne, Time Out

23. (-4) Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari

Robert Wiene

“Undoubtedly one of the most exciting and inspired horror movies ever made. The story is a classic sampling of expressionist paranoia about a hypnotist who uses a somnambulist to do his murders, full of the gloom and fear that prevailed in Germany as it emerged from WWI. There are plenty of extremely boring sociological/critical accounts of the film; best to avoid them and enjoy the film’s extraordinary use of painted light and Veidt’s marvellous performance.” – David Pirie, Time Out

24. (-1) The Fly

David Cronenberg

“‘What am I working on? I’m working on something that will change the world and human life as we know it!’ So Seth Brundle (Goldblum) promises in the opening line of Cronenberg’s inspired remake… This is a film about fusion. That of man and insect, of course; but also the emotional and physical fusion between man and woman – liberating and painful as that may be. The playful, quirky chemistry between Goldblum and Davis in the first half of the movie ensures that this gothic horror is heartbreaking as well as stomach-churning (the special effects by Chris Walas are still staggering).” – Tom Charity, Time Out

25. (0) An American Werewolf in London

John Landis

“‘An American Werewolf in London’ is one of the few horror films that explore the psychological effects of lycanthropy alongside the physical and the fallout. David’s vivid dreams subsequent the attack are still startling and intense, and they’re very bad omens that he will more than likely submit to the beast and lose his essence as a man. “An American Werewolf in London” has every chance to be cheap and exploitative and prefers instead to create a very heartfelt and terrifying vision of a man becoming a werewolf, and to this day there’s yet to be a horror film that touches on the curse with superior aptitude.” – Felix Vasquez Jr., Cinema Crazed

26. (0) The Haunting

Robert Wise

“Often overwrought in its performances, this adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House – a group of people gather in a large old house to determine whether or not a poltergeist is the source of rumours that it is haunted – still manages to produce its fair share of frissons. What makes the film so effective is not so much the slightly sinister characterisation of the generally neurotic group, but the fact that Wise makes the house itself the central character, a beautifully designed and highly atmospheric entity which, despite the often annoyingly angled camerawork, becomes genuinely frightening.” – Time Out

27. (0) The Innocents

Jack Clayton

“Is it the finest, smartest, most visually savvy horror film ever made by a big studio? Deborah Kerr is the sexually straitjacketed governess subject to either the ghastly duplicity of her dead-eyed charges (Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin) or the threatening ghosts of the estate’s previous servants—or both—and it might be the most unforgettable performance by a British actress in its decade. Clayton’s filmmaking, mustering frisson by both candle and blazing daylight, could serve as an object lesson in its genre. Only Robert Wise’s The Haunting, out two years later, came close to its edge-of-sight menace, repressed gothic angst, and all-suggestion creep-outs.” – Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice

28. (+1) Freaks

Tod Browning

“Freaks uses authentic circus performers and unapologetically exploits their real genetic malformations in a melodramatic masterpiece of black comic horror. A scheming trapeze artist marries a circus midget for his money; his fellow performers welcome her as an honorary “freak” and their chanting ritual – gabba gabba, one of us! – left me gasping… What cultural references are there for this? Poe? David Lynch? Antonin Artaud? Diane Arbus? Maybe. Freaks is filled with poignancy; it offers a premonition of eugenics, as well as a provocative comparison with the alienated condition of women and the freakish nature of all showbiz celebrity. It is a work of genius.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

29. (-5) Don’t Look Now

Nicolas Roeg

“Conceived in Roeg’s usual imagistic style and predicated upon a series of ominous associations (water, darkness, red, shattering glass), it’s hypnotically brilliant as it works remorselessly toward a sense of dislocation in time; an undermining of all the senses, in fact, perfectly exemplified by Sutherland’s marvellous Hitchcockian walk through a dark alley where a banging shutter, a hoarse cry, a light extinguished at a window, all recur as in a dream, escalating into terror the second time round because a hint of something seen, a mere shadow, may have been the dead child.” – Time Out

30. (0) The Wicker Man

Robin Hardy

“The film creates atmosphere as well as any horror movie of the sound era; but where the contemporaneous Italian horror cinema, for example, was all about an atmosphere of the uncanny and of a certain cosmic vileness that makes everything horrible and unreal, The Wicker Man is a movie that manages to create, in watching it, something akin to the heightened feeling of queasiness that comes right before a storm. But it does this entirely under the surface: obliquely, it’s all about a shouty cop being rude to odd, and even outright weird neo-pagans, but neo-pagans who seem unfailingly nice. – Tim Brayton, Antagony & Ecstasy

“While not many movies insist on the suspension of disbelief that Poltergeist demands, skepticism vanishes quickly. For Poltergeist is more than an entertaining spook show. It’s also touching, funny and human. To give any of the plot away would be a gross disservice. (Small children who think the objects in their rooms take on scary shapes when the lights go out, however, should be kept away from Poltergeist at all costs.) Though the film avoids the blood and guts endemic to the genre, it is nonetheless a goose-pimpler. The performances are all first-rate, and tiny Heather will melt the hardest heart.” – People

32. (-1) The Omen

Richard Donner

“This apocalyptic movie mostly avoids physical gore to boost its relatively unoriginal storyline with suspense, some excellent acting (especially from Warner and Whitelaw), and a very deft, incident-packed script. There is not a single original theme in The Omen, but its makers are so resolute in avoiding padding, and so deceptively accomplished in their use of emotional triggers, that you come out wondering how the film succeeds so well. The secret lies partly in the hermetically tight construction which, among other things, veers the action to a spooky chase across Europe just when other horror movies are getting bogged down in what dumb effect to produce next.” – Time Out

33. (-1) Repulsion

Roman Polanski

“Roman Polanski followed up his international breakthrough Knife in the Water with this controversial, chilling tale of psychosis. Catherine Deneuve is Carol, a fragile, frigid young beauty cracking up in her London flat when left alone by her vacationing sister. She is soon haunted by specters real and imagined, and her insanity grows to a violent, hysterical pitch. Thanks to its disturbing detail and Polanski’s adeptness at turning claustrophobic space into an emotional minefield, Repulsion is a surreal, mind-bending odyssey into personal horror, and it remains one of cinema’s most shocking psychological thrillers.” – The Criterion Collection

34. (0) Ringu

Hideo Nakata

“Director Hideo Nakata manages to strike a genuinely alarming balance between the cultural depths of Japanese folklore and the surface sheen of latter-day teen culture. With its video curses, late-night television links and matter-of-life-or-death phone calls, Ring has more than enough techno-friendly trappings to ensnare the average channel surfer. But lurking at the bottom of its well of intrigue is a timeless terror more attuned to the mature sensibilities of an adult audience. And it is this unique combination of old folk devils and contemporary moral panics which gives Ring such a nerve-rattling edge.” – Mark Kermode, Sight and Sound

35. (0) Låt den rätte komma in

Tomas Alfredson

“Though subtlety and atmosphere may be two of the key factors that help distinguish Let the Right One In from a vast majority of jump-cut-laden adolescent vampire flicks, the filmmakers don’t shy away when the time comes for all hell to break loose. Not only does that stylistic decision allow cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema the chance to get a little creative during some of the film’s more intense sequences, but it also helps to make the violence all the more effective when it actually occurs onscreen, skillfully laying the groundwork for a beautifully executed payoff that will nudge Let the Right One In into near-classic territory for many.” – Jason Buchanan, TV Guide

36. (+3) Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Don Siegel

“Siegel, as ever rough-edged and machismo, is clearly taken with this smart screenplay’s many levels, and deliberately lets this film run from terror to melodrama to comedy. As screenwriters were being blacklisted, he went for the jugular of American paranoia. As Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter, both hitting a shrill exaggeration in performance, dash about avoiding assimilation while no one listens, Siegel’s isn’t a work of paranoia; it’s a sarcastic attack upon it.” – Ian Nathan, Empire Magazine

37. (+1) Scream

Wes Craven

“The best fright fest of the ’90s, Wes Craven’s “Scream” playfully tweaks many of the horror/ slasher conventions in place since the arrival of “Halloween” and “Friday the 13th” in the mid-’80s, but it does so with a fiendishly clever, complicated plot that makes it an instant classic, and not simply of the genre. Though it begins and ends with requisite bloody roughness, the film deftly mixes irony, self-reference and wry social commentary with chills and blood spills.” – Richard Harrington, Washington Post

38. (+8) Peeping Tom

Michael Powell

“Few films have as strange and tortured a destiny as Peeping Tom. Unanimously savaged by critics at the time of its 1960 release, Michael Powell’s sympathetic portrait of a mild-mannered serial killer was pulled from London theaters in less than a week… Today, thanks largely to a 1980 revival engineered by Powell enthusiast and fellow director Martin Scorsese, Peeping Tom is rightly seen as a horror classic and sophisticated psychological journey… Peeping Tom was a bold, subversive risk. Far ahead of its time, it’s a study in voyeurism that equates photography and moviemaking with scopophilia, the morbid urge to gaze.” – Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle

39. (+1) Videodrome

David Cronenberg

“When Max Renn goes looking for edgy new shows for his sleazy cable TV station, he stumbles across the pirate broadcast of a hyperviolent torture show called Videodrome. As he struggles to unearth the origins of the program, he embarks on a hallucinatory journey… Videodrome is one of writer/director David Cronenberg’s most original and provocative works, fusing social commentary with shocking elements of sex and violence. With groundbreaking special effects makeup by Academy Award®-winner Rick Baker, Videodrome has come to be regarded as one of the most influential and mind-bending science fiction films of the 1980s.” – The Criterion Collection

40. (-3) Dracula

Tod Browning

“This seminal classic from director Tod Browning is one of the most famous horror movies ever made, but by today’s standards it is rather talky, stagebound and bloodless, with most of its important chills occurring off-screen. However, it remains the most subtly romantic and highly atmospheric rendition of Bram Stoker’s tale about the Transylvanian count, with Browning orchestrating the opening scenes to macabre perfection.” – Alan Jones, Radio Times

41. (+12) Cat People

Jacques Tourneur

“First in the wondrous series of B movies in which Val Lewton elaborated his principle of horrors imagined rather than seen, with a superbly judged performance from Simon as the young wife ambivalently haunted by sexual frigidity and by a fear that she is metamorphosing into a panther. With its chilling set pieces directed to perfection by Tourneur, it knocks Paul Schrader’s remake for six, not least because of the care subtly taken to imbue its cat people (Simon, Russell) with feline mannerisms.” – Tom Milne, Time Out

42. (+5) King Kong

Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack

“If this glorious pile of horror-fantasy hokum has lost none of its power to move, excite and sadden, it is in no small measure due to the remarkable technical achievements of Willis O’Brien’s animation work, and the superbly matched score of Max Steiner… The throbbing heart of the film lies in the creation of the semi-human simian himself, an immortal tribute to the Hollywood dream factory’s ability to fashion a symbol that can express all the contradictory erotic, ecstatic, destructive, pathetic and cathartic buried impulses of ‘civilised’ man.” – Wally Hammond, Time Out

43. (-1) The Descent

Neil Marshall

“From the high-impact opening shock to the poignantly bleak ending, this underground Deliverance is designed to cause maximum stress in anyone remotely claustrophobic, vertiginous or afraid of the dark. Marshall’s expert choreography of the creepy “crawler” creatures provides the extra terror, while they provide the full-on skin-slicing gore. As a writer and director he has a keen understanding of what makes the horror genre tick, and overturns the usual conventions with canny wit. Super-scary and vicious, both psychologically and physically, this cleverly produced chill-ride is edgy British horror at its very best.” – Alan Jones, Radio Times

“An incredible amalgam of horror and fairytale in which scalpels thud into quivering flesh and the tremulous heroine (Scob) remains a prisoner of solitude in a waxen mask of eerie, frozen beauty… Illuminated throughout by Franju’s unique sense of poetry – nowhere more evident than in the final shot of Scob wandering free through the night, her mask discarded but her face seen only by the dogs at her feet and the dove on her shoulder – it’s a marvellous movie in the fullest sense.” – Tom Milne, Time Out

45. (-9) Hellraiser

Clive Barker

“Barker’s dazzling debut as a director creates such an atmosphere of dread that the astonishing visual set pieces simply detonate in a chain reaction of cumulative intensity. His use of the traditional ‘teenage screamer’ heroine (Larry’s daughter) tends to undercut the unsettling moral ambiguities of the adult triangle, and the brooding menace of the Cenobites is far more terrifying than the climactic rollercoaster ride. These are small quibbles, however, in a debut of such exceptional promise. A serious, intelligent and disturbing horror film.” – Time Out

46. (+3) Friday the 13th

Sean S. Cunningham

“When viewed in comparison to the current state of horror movies as defined by the Hostel and Saw series, the original Friday the 13th seems downright tame, if not genuinely classical with its stripped down, campfire-tale aesthetic. And that is, ultimately, what the film is: a campfire boogeyman story designed to do little more than build tension and deliver a few well-timed shocks, which it does with precision and even a bit of artistry. It’s certainly easy to knock Friday the 13th for its various faults, but what those criticisms usually boil down to is an assault on its limited aspirations. Sure, it doesn’t do a whole lot, but what it does do it does quite well.” – James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk

47. (+13) Vampyr

Carl Theodor Dreyer

“With Vampyr, Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer’s brilliance at achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, profoundly unsettling imagery (The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath) was for once applied to the horror genre. Yet the result—concerning an occult student assailed by various supernatural haunts and local evildoers in a village outside Paris—is nearly unclassifiable, a host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds creating a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs, ominous scythes, and foreboding echoes, Vampyr is one of cinema’s great nightmares.” – The Criterion Collection

48. (+6) 28 Days Later…

Danny Boyle

“From eerie vistas of deserted London to unnerving views of Manchester reduced to burning rubble, this Dogme-driven apocalyptic nightmare from director Danny Boyle is a tense, exciting and terrifying horror. A powerfully iconoclastic Dawn-meets-Day of the Dead hybrid (written by Alex Garland, author of The Beach), this triumphantly executed piece of contemporary horror has genuine shock value with its down-and-dirty violence and disturbing authenticity. Shot on digital video for a documentary feel that is tempered with occasional, unexpected flashes of surreal artfulness, Garland’s compelling story grips on every level as Boyle’s visual concept dovetails perfectly with the atmospheric narrative to produce an engrossing assault on the senses.” – Alan Jones, Radio Times

“Before Psycho, Peeping Tom, and Repulsion, there was Diabolique. This thriller from Henri‑Georges Clouzot, which shocked audiences in Europe and the U.S., is the story of two women—the fragile wife and the willful mistress of the sadistic headmaster of a boys’ boarding school—who hatch a daring revenge plot. With its unprecedented narrative twists and terrifying images, Diabolique is a heart-grabbing benchmark in horror filmmaking, featuring outstanding performances by Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, and Paul Meurisse.” – The Criterion Collection

51. (+5) Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Philip Kaufman

“Though it lacks the awesome allegorical ambiguousness of the 1956 classic of sci-fi/political paranoia, Kaufman and screenwriter WD Richter’s update and San Francisco transposition of Jack Finney’s novel is a far from redundant remake. The extraterrestrial pod people now erupt into a world where seemingly everyone is already ‘into’ changing their lives or lifestyles, and into a cinematic landscape already criss-crossed by an endless series of conspiracies, while the movie has as much fun toying with modern thought systems (psychology, ecology) as with elaborate variations on its predecessor.” – Time Out

52. (-7) Aliens

James Cameron

“The first of these movies remains one of the great sci-fi horror achievements of the modern cinema, but its sequel, “Aliens,” is that rare instance where a follow-up deviates from the formula and finds an effective rhythm in propelling the story. As a vehicle to showcase the emerging talents of a then-relative newcomer named James Cameron, the movie also inspired the way many such films have been made in the years since: with full ensembles of distinctive speaking parts, moody photography that exploited claustrophobic feelings, and a sense of storytelling that was gradual but unrelenting in the way it imprisoned characters in a world of nonstop terror.” – David Keyes, Cinemaphile

53. (+15) Black Christmas

Bob Clark

“A precursor to “Halloween” and infinitely superior as a thriller and slasher film, “Black Christmas” is that masterpiece of horror that has various facets years after its creation, and there’s yet to be a slasher that’s as unsettling and haunting. While I’ll always love The Shape emerging to chase after Laurie Strode, for my money “Black Christmas” is the supreme slasher film that succeeds as a nightmarish, and twisted practice in mystery and ambiguity filled with entertaining in-jokes, and a director who is not above leaving the audience with as many answers as they had before watching his work.” – Felix Vasquez Jr., Cinema Crazed

54. (-10) Se7en

David Fincher

“Admittedly, designer unpleasantness is a hallmark of our era, and this movie may be more concerned with wallowing in it than with illuminating what it means politically. Yet the filmmakers stick to their vision with such dedication and persistence that something indelible comes across—something ethically and artistically superior to The Silence of the Lambs that refuses to exploit suffering for fun or entertainment and leaves you wondering about the world we’re living in.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

55. (+7) Shaun of the Dead

Edgar Wright

“A hybrid of stylish suspense and dry comedy, Shaun Of The Dead tries to do right by all its contributing elements and mostly succeeds. No laughing matter, the zombies come straight out of a George Romero film, lumbering along with a fearsome intensity. Wright directs with an expert sense of rhythm but never lays his technical finesse on with Guy Ritchie thickness; he lets his characters take center stage even after he’s shown he can frame them through a gaping hole in a zombie’s stomach.” – Keith Phipps, A.V. Club

56. (+7) Braindead

Peter Jackson

“Dead-Alive is one outrageously gruesome set piece after another, a movie in which the human characters are boring but the limbs, eyeballs, and — especially — intestinal tracts have an exuberant life of their own. There are no rules in Jackson’s slapstick carnival of gore. Bodies tear themselves in half; rib cages are ripped from their owners; a murderous monster baby burrows into someone’s head from the inside; the hero plows through a living room full of zombies while wielding a raised lawn mower. Do you really want me to go on? Dead-Alive obviously isn’t for everyone, but it’s the most delirious bloodbath since Re-Animator, the kind of horror movie that makes you want to turn your head — and then dares you to look away.” – Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

57. (-9) Dracula

Terence Fisher

“This creepy period yarn has retained much of its bite… One shouldn’t be brutal about a film of such noble intent, but as ‘horror’ it doesn’t have the honest-to-goodness scares that modern audiences expect. Still, Christopher Lee’s Dracula is a menacing and complex presence who never lets his fangs and cape dominate. There’s also the canny use of vampirism as an allegory for drug abuse and sexually transmitted disease: is this the camp forerunner to Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction?” – David Jenkins, Time Out

“Though not without some genuinely frightening moments, The Sixth Sense is less a horror film than a moody piece of magic realism. Shyamalan’s approach, composed largely of Kubrickian extended takes, has a sense of purpose and an artful construction that respects both its story and its audience, allowing both to take their time sorting things out.” – Keith Phipps, A.V. Club

59. (0) Eraserhead

David Lynch

“Watching Eraserhead today, what emerges is the sheer, immersive clarity of David Lynch’s vision, the sense of a world unlike our own and yet inextricably bound to it: a world in which all the light has been sucked out, leaving only horror and isolation, desperation and unattainable dreams. Knowing the struggles Lynch and his crew underwent to complete this wildly uncommercial labour of love, over five years of scratching for every budgetary dollar, the absence of compromise astounds. Eraserhead is a singular work of the imagination, a harrowing, heartbreaking plunge into the darkest recesses of the soul.” – Tom Huddleston, Time Out

60. (-9) Dead of Night

Various

“Unlike most other anthologies—which are usually directed by one person—Dead of Night divides its content between four different directors. That the end result is as cohesive and flows as naturally as it does is a testament to the strengths of all its directors. Basil Dearden handled the wraparound segments dealing with the gathering at the manor. The final four minutes of the film, an unbearably chilling whirlpool of madness, is a tour de force depiction of the man’s nightmare.” – Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine

61. (+29) The Night of the Hunter

Charles Laughton

“The Night of the Hunter—incredibly, the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever directed—is truly a stand-alone masterwork. A horror movie with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, it stars a sublimely sinister Robert Mitchum as a traveling preacher named Harry Powell, whose nefarious motives for marrying a fragile widow, played by Shelley Winters, are uncovered by her terrified young children. Graced by images of eerie beauty and a sneaky sense of humor, this ethereal, expressionistic American classic—also featuring the contributions of actress Lillian Gish and writer James Agee—is cinema’s most eccentric rendering of the battle between good and evil.” – The Criterion Collection

62. (-19) Ôdishon

Takashi Miike

“Miike’s static long shots and symbolic use of color subversively recall Ozu, and the audition itself becomes, intentional or not, a studied take on stately naïvete. Audition’s stylistic trapdoor, though, isn’t as abrupt as many seem to suggest, because a shaking body bag and a troubled Asami (sitting by her phone waiting for Aoyama’s delayed call) terrifyingly portend the chaos yet to come. Miike’s torture mechanism is very much based on the premise that performance is crucial to the freeing of the soul, and just as Asami’s rage is as much a product of Freudian psychosexual repression, so too does it express a need to negate her passivity.” – Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine

63. (-11) The Phantom of the Opera

Rupert Julian

“The result bears out the suggestion that Phantom belongs to Chaney more than anyone else, and not just because the famous unmasking scene and the rousing finale have an energy not seen elsewhere in the film. It belongs to Chaney for the same reason Frankenstein belongs to Boris Karloff and Dracula to Bela Lugosi: His monster’s indiscriminate rages, consuming desire, and world-shattering emotions make the world around him seem tiny by comparison.” – Keith Phipps, A.V. Club

64. (0) I Walked with a Zombie

Jacques Tourneur

“I Walked With a Zombie is a master class in sight, sound, and suggestion from beginning to end. Jane Eyre’s gothic romance is transplanted to the West Indies, where Betsey Connell (Dee) confronts the power of voodoo. In the film’s most famous sequence, Betsey takes an extended trip through a sugar cane field and encounters the zombie Carrefour (Jones). Tourneur’s images cast an unnerving spell, suggesting that the emotionally frustrated living may be the real zombies.” – Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine

65. (-4) Night of the Demon

Jacques Tourneur

“A major work in that minor genre, horror movies. Intelligent, delicate, and actually frightening (no kidding), this was directed by Jacques Tourneur, author of many of the best of Val Lewton’s famous series of B-budget shockers. A shot or two of a cheesy monster (insisted upon by the producer) are the only violations of the film’s sublime allusiveness, through which the unseen acquires a palpitating presence. Tourneur is attempting a rational apprehension of the irrational, examining not so much the supernatural itself but the insecurities it springs from and the uses it may be put to.” – Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

66. (-1) Re-Animator

Stuart Gordon

“Stuart Gordon doesn’t just push the envelope of good taste with this one; he tears right through it. From the opening scene the gross factor is set at a high level, and it only escalates until it reaches a moment that has remained one of the most infamous in contemporary horror film history. The sheer audacity of this film is enough to justify its cult status, but there is much more to it that has made it one of the best entries in the splatter-film subgenre. Violence and gore will only carry a film so far. What this movie has in its favor is a sharp and witty sense of dark humor. While sometimes campy, the comedy is played seriously by the actors, who never wink or nudge at the camera.” – Felix Gonzalez Jr., DVD Review

67. (+7) The Wolf Man

George Waggner

“Like most of the Universal crop, this intelligent and sophisticated picture unfortunately sports a brief running time (70 minutes), but the screenplay by Curt Siodmak manages to pack the proceedings with all manner of intriguing developments, including discussions on the duality of man as well as the place of superstition in a God-fearing world. Jack Pierce’s makeup design is superb, and the strong cast also includes Ralph Bellamy as the local constable, Lugosi as a doomed fortune teller, and Maria Ouspenskaya as the gypsy woman who attempts to help Larry.” – Matt Brunson, Creative Loafing

68. (-2) The Return of the Living Dead

Dan O’Bannon

“O’Bannon’s filmmaking techniques are simple and resourceful, with shots following the actors around the room in consistent medium shots as they volley rapid-fire (and quotable) dialogue off of one another. It’s the zombie movie Howard Hawks never got to make, and frankly it’s less Rio Bravo than His Girl Friday with all the ribald humor on display. Well acted, with endearing characters from both the punk contingent and the middle-aged office guys.” – Jeremiah Kipp, Slant Magazine

69. (0) Carnival of Souls

Herk Harvey

“With its striking black-and-white compositions, disorienting dream sequences and eerie atmosphere, this has the feel of a silent German expressionist movie. Unfortunately, so does some of the acting, which suffers from exaggerated facial expressions and bizarre gesturing. But the mesmerising power of the carnival and dance-hall sequences far outweighs the corniness of the awkward intimate scenes; and as Mary, caught in limbo between this world and the next, dances to the discordant carnival music of time, the subsequent work of George Romero and David Lynch comes constantly to mind.” – Time Out

70. (-12) The Invisible Man

James Whale

“The megalomania that ensues upon Rains’ ability to go about unseen is played for suspense, pathos and tongue-in-cheek humour (he can’t go out in the rain, because it would make him look like a ridiculous bubble). The real strengths of the movie are John P Fulton’s remarkable special effects (Rains removing his bandages to reveal nothing, footsteps appearing as if by magic in the snow), lending much-needed conviction to the blatant fantasy; and the fact that we never see the scientist without his bandages until the very end of the film.” – Time Out

71. (-4) Creature from the Black Lagoon

Jack Arnold

“A much more antic, exploitative experience than the Frankenstein/Wolfman/Mummy/Dracula pictures it stands alongside, Creature from the Black Lagoon perfectly typifies the transition from older, more European horror styles into bloodthirsty schlock and ever-cheaper thrills. Though the creature will destroy anyone who stands between him and Kay, who he continually sweeps up in his arms to drag off to do God-knows-where, it’s Denning actually forms the movie’s (human) conscience. An aspiring romantic stuck in a chiseled man’s-man persona, he’s all about the kill, as the audience must inevitably be as well. It’s still a man’s world—or is it?” – Steve Macfarlane, Slant Magazine

72. (+10) The Ring

Gore Verbinski

“Expanding on the strong visual sense evinced in the otherwise mediocre The Mexican, director Gore Verbinski creates an air of dread that begins with the first scene and never lets up, subtly incorporating elements from the current wave of Japanese horror films along the way. He succeeds mostly through sleight of hand. When the shocks come, they interrupt long stretches in which the camera lingers meaningfully as characters accumulate details that confirm what they already know: What they’ve seen will kill them, and soon.” – Keith Phipps, A.V. Club

73. (-3) Day of the Dead

George A. Romero

“Though still unmistakably allegorical, much of the irony and parable foreshadowing of the first two films has all but vanished, leaving behind bitterness, lament and cynicism. In a world that seems to drift further and further into a diplomatic declaration of martial law with each and every Presidential address, the overriding voice of Day of the Dead speaks for the universal rage of all displaced peoples, backed into a corner and certain that they are in the oppressed minority. Day of the Dead is the synthesis of all the racial, tribal, social and governmental concerns of the first two films, and Romero’s notions are not pretty.” – Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine

74. (+3) Island of Lost Souls

Erle C. Kenton

“One of the best-kept secrets in rock criticism is that all of Devo’s original act—from the “de-evolution” rap down to the chant of “Are we not men?”—was a straight cop from this 1933 adaptation of H.G. Wells’s Island of Dr. Moreau. Charles Laughton, with an obscene caterpillar mustache, is the mad doctor working on the transformation of animals into (sub)human beings by means of sickening “surgical techniques”; Richard Arlen and Leila Hyams are two shipwreck survivors who, unsuspecting, wash up on his shore. It’s a grand, hokey chiller, dripping with sex and sadism and photographed in dense, Sternbergian shadows by the great cinematographer Karl Struss.” – Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

75. (+18) Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

John McNaughton

“The tensions developed here are more behavioral and psychological than those essayed by Hitchcock, though the insights into the personality of a compulsive killer are at best partial and perfunctory. What mainly registers is the nihilism of the warped ex-con (Rooker) and his dim-witted friend and accomplice (Towles), who joins him in a string of senseless murders, which the film makes chillingly believable.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

76. (-5) La maschera del demonio

Mario Bava

“Intense gore also being part of the Italian horror experience, I take pleasure in thinking that this early masterpiece of the form would be, in its little way, intense enough that even after decades of increasingly explicit and imaginative bloodletting, Black Sunday still includes moments that can be genuinely unsettling. The hallmark of Bava’s filmmaking is style, atmosphere, and alarming violence, and these things are all at their very best here, in his most approachable and perhaps even his most beautiful film. It’s a tremendous start to what would end up being one of the most brilliant careers in all of horror, and one of the genres undeniable masterpieces.” – Tim Brayton, Antagony & Ecstasy

“One of the most meticulously crafted supernatural fantasy films ever made, Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan is also one of the most unusual. While such classic black and white chillers as The Uninvited, The Innocents and The Haunting teasingly speculate on the existence of ghosts, this lavish widescreen and color production deals with the spirit world head-on, as something completely and frighteningly real.” – David Ehrenstein, The Criterion Collection

78. (-5) Misery

Rob Reiner

“The casting is inspired: Caan oozes frustration at his physical disability, while Bates brings authority and an eerie naturalness to her demented character, her homespun expressions (‘oogie’, ‘dirty birdy’) providing a bizarre counterpoint to her increasingly cruel actions. Reiner captures just the right level of physical tension, but for the most part wisely emphasises the mental duels. Terrific.” – Time Out

79. (+6) Saw

James Wan

“Saw is everything a thriller should be. Instead of a long-winded back story to lead into our premise, Wan and Whannell move right into the thick of things. The story is exceptionally clever, revealing the characters and Jigsaw himself very carefully. Just when you may think you’re getting a handle on a character or a situation, Saw throws you for a loop again and again. The intensity is constant and absolutely relentless. Much like the tests Jigsaw puts his subjects to, Saw is an endurance test. When you think you can relax and take a deep breath, it hits you again.” – Jeff Otto, IGN

80. (-8) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Rouben Mamoulian

“March deservedly won an Oscar for his astonishing “dual” role (shared with Wallace Beery for THE CHAMP), but perhaps the real star of the film is director Mamoulian, whose audacious use of symbolism and careful pacing increase the mystique of this strange story. His heavy use of point-of-view editing is entirely appropriate to the story, and Struss’s outstanding photography is a marvel to behold. Made before the Production Code clampdown in 1934, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE not only uses violence to great effect but also does not shy away from the links between horror and sexuality.” – TV Guide’s Movie Guide

81. (+16) Onibaba

Kaneto Shindô

“No masterpiece by any means, it’s at times overplayed, but it’s striking visually, handling swift horizontal movement – and using the claustrophobic body-high reeds among which the women live – very well. It’s also genuinely erotic, and the treatment in detail of the women’s lives as essentially bestial is interesting so long as Shindo stops short of portentous allegorising about the human condition.” – Time Out

82. (+1) The Howling

Joe Dante

“The Howling is a cracking good horror film, anchored by strong performances. Rather than being a stereotypical female victim, Karen is smart, fierce, and formidable, even when she’s vulnerable in the face of hairy beasts. The movie is also aided by groundbreaking special effects, which still look phenomenal today. Makeup wizard Rob Bottin developed a smoother, more convincing way to do werewolf transitions than had ever been seen before. Without a doubt, the showstopping moment comes when we spend several minutes watching a character morph into a wolf. This has to be one of the seminal moments in ’80s horror.” – Mike McGranaghan, Aisle Seat

83. (-4) The Black Cat

Edgar G. Ulmer

“Filled with startling visuals—perhaps one of the single greatest images to come out of the Universal horror cycle is the breathtaking image of Poelzig’s collection of dead women hovering in glass cases as he walks among them stroking his cat, admiring his “pussy” as it were—and meticulously designed as one of the genuine triumphs of the first period of expressionist cinema, the film has been unfortunately overshadowed by inferior films from the Universal horror period. The Black Cat’s ability to peer around the corners of its own genre notions of master criminals and horror fiends allows for a film that is both luxuriously mysterious and strangely relevant, the shadow of a social critique within the elaborate body of a work of baroque horror.” – Joshua Vasquez, Slant Magazine

84. (+5) The Others

Alejandro Amenábar

“This is a modern horror film with an old-fashioned touch, relying on suspense and the suggestion of the supernatural to generate a disturbing sense of the Uncanny. In the manner of classic haunted house movies like THE INNOCENTS (1960) and THE HAUNTING (1963), THE OTHERS uses a deliberately steady pace to increase tension, gradually drawing viewers into its mystery until they are so engaged that they completely susceptible to the effectively executed scare tactics. Although the actual shocks are few and far between, the film maintains interest with its intelligent storytelling, and the rich atmosphere sustain the mood of supernatural dread throughout.” – Steve Biodrowski, ESplatter

85. (+2) Near Dark

Kathryn Bigelow

“There’s a ghastly humor in all this, and Bigelow brings it out without overindulging it. Faced with a nearly repulsive subject, she makes the blood flow inside it, stream out over the cuts. “Near Dark” (MPAA-rated: R for sex and violence) is probably too violent for any but hard-core horror audiences. But unlike “The Hitcher,” it isn’t illogically violent or artificially horrific. Bigelow’s visual style–rudimentary in her earlier film, “The Loveless”–is often sensational here. She’s made a film whose pop nihilism and occasional wild beauty can raise a few honest shivers.” – Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times

“One of the great sci-fi classics, a Hawks film in all but director credit (he produced, planned the film, supervised the shooting). The gradual build-up of tension, as a lonely group of scientists in the Antarctic discover a flying saucer and its deadly occupant, is quite superb; while The Thing itself (played by Arness) is shown sufficiently little to create real menace. As in most of Hawks’ work, the emphasis is on professionalism in a tiny, isolated community, on a love relationship evolving semi-flippant fashion into something important, and on group solidarity.” – Time Out

87. (-7) The Curse of Frankenstein

Terence Fisher

“Frankenstein was the biggest name in horror from 1931 until 1948 when Universal’s flathead met Abbott and Costello, at which point the tragic, fearsome Monster became a laughable goon… Then Hammer Films, a small British production company, had an unexpected hit with The Quatermass Experiment (1956) and cast around for another monster. They seized on the idea of remaking the original science-gone-mad property, in bloody colour and with as much bodice-ripping and eyeball-in-a-jar action as the censors would allow… it adds dynamism and British grit to a genre that had previously tried to get by on atmospherics and mood alone. It manages to be shocking without being especially frightening, and its virtues of performance and style remain striking.” – Kim Newman, Empire

88. (-12) The Brood

David Cronenberg

“From its wintry Canadian setting to its prominent mad scientist figure, from its darkly imaginative plot to its chilling Howard Shore soundtrack, and from its psychosexual transformations to its unflinchingly repellent body horror, it is unmistakably a film by David Cronenberg – but what makes it unique amongst the visionary auteur’s ouvre is its close connection to his personal biography. For at the time he wrote the script, Cronenberg had just been through a difficult divorce and bitter custody battle for his own daughter – and if The Brood is concerned with transgressively extreme ways of finding release for inner feelings of rage and recrimination, then it is also clear that the film itself allowed the director to give ‘psychoplasmic’ expression to his own sense of anger and frustration.” – Anton Bitel, Movie Gazette

“[Rec] softens us up with a gentle prologue in which the crew of a late-night ‘reality TV’ show… make a late-night visit to a fire station. Then comes a call about an old woman trapped in her apartment. When [they] break into the apartment, they are attacked by a shrieking, zombie-like woman in a blood-stained nightdress… The less you know about what happens next the better. Suffice it to say that nothing in the previous work of joint directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza prepared us for the nerve-shredding intensity of the ensuing scenes. A brilliantly staged early scare signals that the safety rails are off and, despite an unexpected, last-minute swerve into the supernatural realm, the edge-of-the-seat tension is sustained to the very last second.” – Nigel Floyd, Time Out

“This is a movie whose power and emotional pitch lie in the understated: the discreet performances, the lack of special effects, the laconic script. Yes, one can quibble over an unnecessary prologue, a drawn-out séance and a sentimental final sequence, but these are minor flaws in a poignant film that looks to the past and the world beyond to illuminate the realities of the present.” – Maria M. Delgado, Sight and Sound

“This is not a good advert for Hollywood. Not just because Del Toro’s poised and poignant ghost story contains more substance and is executed with more style than a half dozen Hollywood monster movies, but because, working for a major studio, Del Toro turned out such dross himself, namely Mimic. Here the director returns to his Spanish language roots for a complex Gothic horror set in a school for orphaned boys during the Spanish Civil War. Building slowly from a stately start, Del Toro manages to unite all his disparate elements – ghosts and gold, infidelity and politics – for a devastating final reel. The command of sound and colour is breathtaking.” – Colin Kennedy, Empire Magazine

“[Martyrs is] one of the most extreme pictures ever made, one of the finest horror movies of the last decade… What begins as an archetypal genre piece soon twists and snaps in unexpected directions, its dizzying plunges down midnight-black rabbit holes keeping viewers disorientated and vulnerable… Martyrs is, according to Laugier, the “anti-Hostel”, its savagery devoid of glee and its scalpel scraping at mind and soul… a technically brilliant, emotionally resonant, uncommonly cerebral horror film that dares to bend every rule, blend every mood. The first half comprises a reeling camera, disjointed cutting and a half-glimpsed phantom… The second half is mechanical and methodical, evoking Michael Haneke’s cruel austerity yet infused with genuine tenderness.” – Jamie Graham, Total Film

“Writer and director Peele has pulled off a masterstroke with one of the most timely and horrifying satirical takes on anxieties facing African Americans in the 21st century. If that’s not enough, it also takes aim at the horrendous slaving past that blights the country’s history… Peele’s writing is sharp and to the point. There’s not wastage in the story. It gets straight to the point – that racism in all its forms is a horror story in and of itself. While it may make some audiences uncomfortable shining a light on the subject in an entertaining way, it doesn’t lessen the impact of the ignorance. The film even has the balls to take a pop at US policing in a suitably scathing remark on how some officers go beyond their powers to target people of colour.” – Garry McConnachie, Daily Record

94. (+16) The Last House on the Left

Wes Craven

“What does come through in “Last House on the Left” is a powerful narrative, told so directly and strongly that the audience (mostly in the mood for just another good old exploitation film) was rocked back on its psychic heels. Wes Craven’s direction never lets us out from under almost unbearable dramatic tension (except in some silly scenes involving a couple of dumb cops, who overact and seriously affect the plot’s credibility). The acting is unmannered and natural, I guess. There’s no posturing. There’s a good ear for dialogue and nuance. And there is evil in this movie. Not bloody escapism, or a thrill a minute, but a fully developed sense of the vicious natures of the killers. There is no glory in this violence.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“Despite poor dubbing, this is a more interesting and unusual film than its schlock-horror title and subject matter might suggest. The intense climax is approached with excellent cinematography and editing, as savage cruelty is eerily juxtaposed with beautiful scenery and Riz Ortolani’s terrific score. Its pointed attack on exploitative film-making seems somewhat rich in the circumstances, but this is well made, uniquely unpleasant and almost deserving of its huge cult status.” – Time Out

96. (-5) Zombi 2

Lucio Fulci

“The Italian goremeister’s breakthrough film features not a single believable character or plot point, no semblance of narrative cohesion or momentum, scraggly editing, horribly dubbed dialogue and a deadening lack of subtext. Yet via a few satisfyingly blood-splattered set pieces and some nice panoramic shots of voodoo-spawned zombies shuffling through a dusty Caribbean shantytown and emerging from the graves of centuries-old Spanish conquistadors, Fulci’s film nevertheless achieves a ghastly sort of brilliance. With close-ups of zombie mouths tearing flesh from victims’ throats, an eyeball being impaled on a shard of wood, and some hilariously unnecessary T&A, Zombie delivers the grisly B-movie goods.” – Nick Schager, Lessons of Darkness

97. (+46) The Cabin in the Woods

Drew Goddard

“Would you like your head thoroughly messed with? Then check straight into The Cabin in the Woods, the sort of horror movie that knows all the rules, knows that you know, and knows that you know it knows. But you still don’t know what’s coming next, for while this fiendish meta-horror makes a joke of its own mechanics – so much “how”, so little “why” – it also brings both victims and torturers into an unexpected alignment, one in which chaos is guaranteed and there’s literally nowhere to run.” – Anthony Quinn, Independent

98. (+13) Candyman

Bernard Rose

“Candyman charts the systematic social degradation inflicted upon Helen by her mentors, militant Cabrini-Green gang members, the police, her husband, and ultimately the Candyman himself. Played by Tony Todd (and his velvety basso profundo voice), the Candyman is a svelte, sexual monument, far removed from the silent brutality of your average serial slasher. Rose’s dizzy, Jungle Fever-ish romanticism is juxtaposed against his cold, Cronenbergian dystopia to create Candyman’s uniquely baroque use of modern urban blight, subtle political undercurrents, and hints of fallen woman melodrama. It creates a startlingly effective shocker that gains power upon further, sleepless-night reflection.” – Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine

“It is something of a perfect horror movie. The genre, as I have argued and others have argued before me, is all about the interruption of the quotidian by the uncanny; horror, that is, is the presence of inexplicable danger in the face of the most banal kind of normality. It’s hard to think of a better way to describe The Beyond than “inexplicable”, the plot rolls along so capriciously and arbitrarily.” – Tim Brayton, Antagony & Ecstasy

“There are marriages on the rocks and then there’s the fever-pitch non-bliss between Mark (Neill) and Anna (Adjani) in this head-spinning masterpiece from Poland’s Andrzej Zulawski… Possession incorporates more and more fantastical elements as it goes on—such as a spectacular goo-and-gore-covered creature built by E.T. designer Carlo Rambaldi—but the story somehow remains rooted in the harsh realities of human experience. That the film is much more than a gawk-at-it freak show is testament to Zulawski’s talent for making even the most exaggerated behavior resonate with pointed and potent emotion.” – Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York